Barbara Bush: A valuable ally to two U.S. Presidents

Barbara Bush, the widely admired wife of one President and the fiercely loyal mother of another, died on Tuesday evening at her home in Houston. She was 92.

Jim McGrath, a family spokesman, announced the death in a statement posted to Twitter.

On Sunday the office of her husband, former President George Bush, issued a statement saying that after consulting her family and her doctors, Barbara Bush had “decided not to seek additional medical treatment and will instead focus on comfort care”. The Bushes had celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary in January, making them the longest-married couple in presidential history.

Barbara Bush was only the second woman in U.S. history to have a son of hers follow his father to the White House. (Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams, was the first.)

Four campaigns

Dedicated to her family and largely indifferent to glamour, Ms. Bush played down her role in her husband’s political success. But she was a shrewd and valuable ally, becoming a sought-after speaker in at least four national campaigns: in 1980, when George Bush was chosen to be Ronald Reagan’s running mate; in 1984, when the two ran for re-election; in 1988, when Mr. Bush campaigned for President; and in 1992, when he sought re-election. She stepped into another presidential campaign in 2000, that of her son George, then the Governor of Texas.

While first lady, from January 1989 to January 1993, Bush generally refused to talk publicly about contentious issues, particularly when her opinion was said to differ from her husband’s. She was vocal, however, in championing causes of her choosing. Literacy was one, and so was civil rights; she had been an early supporter of the movement.

She enjoyed a favourable public image throughout her years as first lady.

She was born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925, in New York City. She was the third child of the former Pauline Robinson and Marvin Pierce.

She met George Bush in 1941 at a Christmas dance at the Round Hill Country Club in Greenwich, Connecticut. At the time, he was a senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. After graduating in 1942, George Bush enlisted in the Navy and trained as a pilot. She and Bush, on leave from the Navy, married in Rye on January 6, 1945.

Making America literate

After she became first lady she started the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

“I want to be known as a wife, a mother, a grandmother,” she wrote in 1988. “That’s what I am. And I’d like to be known as someone who really cared about people and worked very, very hard to make America more literate.” NY Times